The London Stadium and West Ham have taken the unusual step of not publishing an official attendance for last night’s loss against Brentford.
The official attendance, which relates to tickets sold, is usually published by the club on its website and by media partners, including the BBC and Sky Sports.
Just twenty-four hours before the game, the club published a preview on WHUFC.com in which it proudly claimed “Nuno’s first at home in front of a sold-out 62,500 crowd.”
TV cameras and media picked up on the thousands of seats with Sky Sports highlighting them but no one reported the official attendance post-match.
Boycott organisers Hammers United claimed there were fewer than 40,000 present last night, which, if true, means over 22,500 people with a ticket failed to turn up on Monday night.
We probably won’t know the real attendance until the Newham Council-led London Stadium Safety Advisory Group meets and their figures are subjected to a freedom of information request, which takes a further 20 working days.
Previous freedom of information requests from 2023, 2024 and 2025 have revealed the average real attendance is 50,444, which includes cup games.
When averaging Premier League games only, it rises only to 52,053, showing the levels of missing supporters each and every game at the London Stadium for the last three years.
If the story is correct then I need to explain to people what a boycott is.
1) Paying for a ticket and not turning up is NOT a boycott and there is no effect.
2) NOT paying for a ticket and NOT turning up is a boycott.
The first one will mean the chairman is still happy. The second one means that he isn’t.
All the season ticket holders I know that moved across to the new stadium (some 20+) have all cancelled their ST’s since bar one. And he is thinking about chucking it this season as he’s finally had enough of the place. I bet the amount of ST’s holders from UP who have since cancelled is astronomical.
I am one of these! After 40+ years I had enough and gave my ST up last season. I realised they aren’t going anywhere as they are making too much money off the club. The match day experience had also changed dramatically, so enough was enough. The promises we were giving were just lies and it just wasn’t UP. So with a very heavy heart I decided that was it.
Totally agree with you hammerry, boycotting matches will not help the team one iota! They currently need all the support possible to climb the table. Once tickets are sold Sully is not bothered if those seats are empty, so for a season ticket holder like myself to not turn up is pointless.
Also, under 40,000 who are they kidding? Yes some ‘fans’ boycotted but not that many!
If it doesn’t bother Sullivan then why has the attendance from the Brentford game not been made public?
He is scared of the consequences of his actions.
Constantly telling us the stadium is sold out when this article suggests 10,000 fewer fans inside the stadium says it all.
Fans have had enough of the BS
I can totally understand your viewpoint but taking it from another angle. Supporters are unhappy at the way the club is run and have been for years and the only way we can show this is by protest. Supporters are sick of paying good money to be served sub standard football. Sullivan is cash conscious,relegation to the championship is going to cost dearly and he may want to get out,that gives an interested party a bargaining position to buy the club. Just another viewpoint.
COYI
The picture you are showing was either taken before kick off or near the end of the match and is not representative of the actual attendance. I was there and the crowd was typical of a late Monday school night kick off that was televised. There was no sign of a significant boycott but I did see obvious diehard supposed ‘supporters’ appearing at the top of the steps taking pictures on their phones like this half an hour before kick off!
These people are obviously passionate about what they believe but they are partially responsible for what is happening on the pitch. West Ham played well at he early part of the match and booing them at half time was never going to help them improve in the second half.
They can say they were booing the board but I bet the players didn’t feel that was the case. Everyone needs to get behind the team when they’re on the pitch they’re only human.
Do people really feel like boycotting the game will have the desired effect? I’m NOT a Sully fan and I understand fans frustration but lets be honest, unless you are involved at the highest levels at west ham you have no idea what is actually going on and not fully supporting the team could cost us even more valuable points at a time when the players and the new manager need all the help they can get to win and start climbing the table.
Sully does not seem like the type of guy to be bullied out, he will likely only sell when he gets a great offer that allows him to make an enormous profit and walk away with his pockets full and the protests are probably making that less likely.
For those that want sully gone perhaps the best way to get rid of him is to support the team you love, cheer them on and help them to get the points we all want so sully can sell to a mega money investors.
We need points, we need wins and we need true fans who support their team.
Spot on
Fans support the team mate it is the board they are protesting about and have made that quite clear and the fans will be there in full at Leeds so stop the nonsense about fans not supporting the team.
Change has to be made at the very top and trust me just like Doug Ellis who they thought they would never be rid of at Villa well they did same as Newcastle got rid of Ashley he sold up as the constant pressure by the fans made him think naa do not need the grief and he sold up with a nice profit…our situations different we do not own the stadium we do not own our training ground as all been used to borrow against future earnings and that is going to bite hard when we go down and yes we will go down make no doubt about that,,,,so that leaves a huge loan that needs paying so kiss goodbye to Bowen/Pacman/Summerville…the only players we might get money for just to pay off his debt then Sully Brady and co will leave as like most Billionaires and multi millionaires they will never use there own money to fund anything.
Totally agree Pat.
Not only did protests result in Ashley and Ellis moving on, the same approach worked at Birmingham City. This led to Gold & Sully selling up.
Birmingham were in financial disarray when they took control same as West Ham. They lasted 16 years in control before making their profit and getting out at the right time.
If we drop in to the Championship our debts will remain but our revenue will get hit hard. We don’t own the stadium, training facilities and only have a few players that will generate significant fees.
Sullivan has made a lot of money buying distressed clubs (Birmingham and us).
It makes sense that other ambitious wealthier individuals would seek to repeat this when the cost to buyout Sullivan and shareholders decreases substantially after relegation.
It’s a long process to buy a club so it’s hard unfortunately to see this happening whilst we are still in the Premiership. We might yo-yo up and down like Birmingham City before Sully possibly decides to move on.
West Ham fans are up there with any other passionate fanbase around the UK. You only have to hear and see the support we take to every away game we play!
The only point Pat I disagreed with is owners not putting their own money in to a club.
The Lewis family just invested £100m with the aim of securing better players in January. It sent a signal of intent that they are not for sale and fully in it for the long haul.
Sullivan chose not to use his own money and instead used offshore credit borrowed against assets and future income.
This is either short term reactionary thinking or could it be that he wants a potential new owner / investor to pay off this debt in the future like Kretinsky did previously.
Maybe we already have possible new owners waiting to swoop when it becomes financially more attractive.